Derek Prince - How To Check If Someone's Sermon Is True
This is an excerpt from: Take Heed That You Are Not Deceived
This morning I spoke on: be sober Now I'm going to speak on: be vigilant and the proclamation that we have chosen is a prayer along that line It's taken from Philippians 1:9-11 We just changed the words to personalize it "This we pray that our love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment that we may approve the things that are excellent that we may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God". Amen.
Now I’ve already announced what I’m going to be speaking аbout: Be vigilant. Be sober, be vigilant is taken from 1 Peter 5:8. This morning I spoke about sobriety in entering into spiritual warfare. being realistic. Not having vague or unrealistic attitudes or using language which is above the level of our experience. Tonight I’m talking on be vigilant particularly in regard to the many warnings given in the New Testament against being deceived. Almost every passage in the New Testament that relates to the end of the age contains some kind of warning against being deceived. I’m just going to take two passages from Matthew 24 from the words of Jesus Himself. He was asked, "What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age"? And when He began to answer, the first thing He did was warn His disciples against being deceived. So He said in Matthew 24:4–5: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the [Messiah],’ and will deceive many".
Now Jesus is a true prophet and the Jewish encyclopedia records about forty false messiahs who have come to the Jewish people since the time of Jesus. Perhaps the most famous was Bar Kochba. And all of them have succeeded in deceiving some part of the Jewish people. But the warning goes far beyond the Jewish people. And then in the same chapter in verse 23 and following Jesus says, "Then if anyone says to you ‘Look, here is the [Messiah]!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false [messiahs] and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders so as to deceive if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand". So Jesus says, "You can’t say I didn’t warn you"! And He says, "There will arise false prophets and false messiahs and they will show great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible even the elect [or chosen ones]".
There are two important lessons from that. First of all, that miraculous signs do not necessarily prove that a message is true. Because Jesus says they will show "great signs and wonders" but they’ll be deceivers. You cannot base your assessment of the truth of the message merely on the fact that there were supernatural signs and supernatural experiences. It is extremely dangerous to have that attitude. Secondly, Jesus said Jesus said that "even the elect" would be deceived if it were possible. "The elect" are God’s chosen ones. Why is it not possible that the elect would be deceived? The answer is because God chose them. Our safety is not in how clever we are or how spiritual we are but the fact that God chose us. That’s our security.
Now in order to avoid deception we have to be able to identify the truth. In the examination by Pilate of Jesus Jesus said, "For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I came forth that I might bear witness to the truth". And Pilate replied with a question, "What is truth"? We can’t tell whether he was cynical, "What is truth"? or whether he was genuinely puzzled, "What IS truth"? There is no way we’ll ever know. But he asked a question which philosophers have never been able to answer satisfactorily. In 2,500 years of Western philosophy no philosopher has come up with an answer that satisfies to the question, "What is truth"? We all think we know until we start to define it. And then we find out we don’t know.
However, the Bible does give us a very clear answer to the question, "What is truth"? But it’s not totally simple. Because the Bible presents truth in three aspects and, in order to be sure we have the truth we have to check on all three aspects what I would call three coordinates of truth. And if you’re going to be sure that you really have the truth you have to check all three coordinates to see that they’re all in place. First of all, in John 14:6 Jesus says: "I am the truth". So, the truth is Jesus. But in John 17:17 Jesus was praying to the Father and He said "Your word is [the] truth". So, God’s word is the truth. The Bible. But in 1 John 5:6 John says, "the Holy Spirit. bears witness" to Jesus and "the Spirit is truth".
So you have truth in three related aspects: The truth is Jesus. The truth is the Bible. And the truth is the Spirit. In order to know for sure that you really have the truth you have to check all three coordinates: Jesus, the Bible, and the Spirit. For instance, somebody may preach a whole lot about Jesus it may sound very good but when you check your Bible, it isn’t what the Bible says about Jesus. Or somebody may preach a great deal about the Holy Spirit and work up an atmosphere of tremendous excitement and exhilaration but when you really check it that person is not really teaching the truth about Jesus. Or a person may lay great emphasis on the Bible and the Scripture but have nothing of the Spirit it’s just dead letters. So, in order to be sure that you have the truth you have to have three things in place. Is it true to Jesus? Is it true to the Bible? and Does it have the witness of the Holy Spirit? When you put those three things together then you may be confident that you have the truth.